Web Analytics Report 8/14/10 - 8/28/10

This is the bi-weekly report on the New York State Senate’s web presence. This period the website received a total of 44226 visits, a significant drop since the last report. It had a bounce rate of 59%, the same as last report, and higher than the long term average of 44%. The website had new visitors 70% of the time, a three point increase the last report and more than the long term average of 66%.

The Open Legislation service provided by the New York State Senate makes bills, meeting calendars, meeting transcripts and other legislative documents available to the public in transparent and searchable way. In the past two weeks the most searched for legislative items were around the environment and green energy. This does not necessarily correlate with the most viewed items, however. The report following shows the most viewed Bills, Keyword Searches, Calendars, Transcripts and Meetings in the Open Legislation system.

The live webcasting of session has drawn 8066027 visits, an increase of nearly 10000 over last period. Archived footage kept pace in growth arriving at 638182 views to date. The short clips on the NYSenate Youtube account are about 9 times more watched than the full videos of session and events posted on the nysenateuncut account.

The number of Senators using Facebook and Twitter accounts linked to NYSenate.gov remained constant at 35 and 23 respectively. Using social media the Senators now reach a total of 25208 people through Facebook, a slight drop since last period, using accounts linked to NYSenate.gov and 14165 through Twitter accounts linked to NYSenate.gov. The NYSenate account itself currently reaches 4355 people through its Twitter account.

These real time analytics show how many people are on the website at a given moment, whether they are filling out a form, reading material or are idle. It can also gauge how popular a given piece of content is site-wide at a particular time. Because of its real-time tracking Chartbeat can also gather information about website performance and there is no waiting for data.